The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was enacted in 2012, and is a special law to protect children.

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act has been in the news recently, after Bombay High Court Justice Pushpa Ganediwala’s controversial judgments in child sexual abuse cases. Back in 2019, the POCSO Act garnered interest when an amendment was made to it when minimum punishment for aggravated as well as penetrative sexual assault on children below 16 years was increased from 10 to 20 years, extendable to life imprisonment or death.

Objective and Significance:

The POCSO Act was enacted in 2012 and is gender neutral — it recognizes that boys can be victims of sexual violence as well. It defines a child as someone under the age of 18. The Indian Penal Code does not recognize that sexual assault can be committed on boys.
The Act also increased the scope of reporting sexual crimes against children. It expanded the definition of sexual assault to include non-penetrative sexual assault as well as aggravated penetrative sexual assault (sections 3 to 10), and also included punishment for persons in positions of trust of authority like public servants, staff of educational institutions, police etc.

Notably, this law recognizes sexual harassment of a child which involves touch, and also that which doesn’t (sections 11 and 12), such as stalking, making a child expose themselves or exposing themselves to a child, and so on.

The POCSO Act also specifically lays down stringent punishment for exposing children to, or using them to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM, also referred to as child pornography) under sections 13, 14, and 15.

While POCSO does not explicitly recognize grooming, experts say that section 11 of the Act can be interpreted to recognize and criminalize it wherein, it. Grooming involved acts of establishing, building a relationship with a child either in person or online so as to facilitate either online or offline sexual contact with the child, section 67(b) of the Information Technology Act does criminalize it.

COMMITTEE FOR POSCO:

To safeguard the interests of the learners, MotiLal Nehru Public School set up the POCSO Committee (set up under the provisions of Prevention of Children from Sexual Offence Act 2012) on May 10, 2019. The Committee works towards safeguarding the learners from the challenges they face in their formative years at school. The Committee takes up age appropriate initiatives to create awareness about sexual exploitation and to ensure that all learners are aware of their rights and responsibilities towards themselves. Training sessions are conducted for the faculty and staff to recognize and report issues of abuse and neglect.

Through its awareness campaigns and programmers, the Committee strives to ensure that all learners are treated with dignity and respect at all times. Gender Sensitivity Awareness programmers are conducted for learners. In a series of Awareness programmers and Special School Assembly conducted in the School throughout the year, learner participation is encouraged. Age appropriate videos are shown and self defence sessions are also conducted as a part of the Awareness programmes.The POCSO committee comprises of the following members: